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THE Ennis Business Forum is doing its bit to try and transform the county capital into Ireland’s friendliest town. Now comes another initiative being pioneered by three-time former Mayor of Ennis, Cllr Frankie Neylon, to create buzz in the town for one day, in the hope that it can stimulate renewed interest and activity in the retail sector.

It’s being labelled as Ennis’ ‘Super Tuesday’ and it takes place on September 6 next – an idea that Cllr Neylon says can be “whatever businesses in the town want it to be to try and help their business”.

The idea for staging a once-off event where businesses can run special promotions, whether individually or in groups, was floated by Cllr Neylon earlier this month within the Ennis Town Council. Since then, thanks to a local marketing drive through the circulation of handouts and questionares among all the businesses in town, sufficient interest has prompted the designation of the first Tuesday of September as the county capital’s ‘Super Tuesday’.

“September 6 is around the time that Muhammad Ali came to Ennis,” says Cllr Neylon. “We can’t use his name for anything and a few people said to me that we should come up with a festival. It was difficult enough to get people to commit to anything.

“I mentioned Super Tuesday to a few people and they thought it was a good idea, so I ran with it a couple of weeks ago. The idea for the day is that instead of making a profit for the day that they might make a customer. It’s to have a special day. They can do whatever they want. It’s left totally to themselves to do what they want.

“We’re inviting all the traders in the town to take part. We want them to join us to have one good day of shopping in Ennis. We want each trader to have their own Super Tuesday – they can do whatever kind of promotion they want with their business.

“I can say that it has proven to be a success so far, and that’s even a good bit ahead of the event. Up to 30 of the businesses around town have been on to me already and they are taking part. We circulated a handout to all businesses. We collected those last week and now we’re getting ready for the day,” he adds.

THE remaining obstacles to the transformation of the West Clare Railway into one of the county’s new flagship tourism products are set to be removed by the end of the year as the project’s promoter presses ahead with ambitious plans to extend the line and build a state-of-the-art museum that will be the only one of its kind in Ireland.

Ennis-based businessman and lifelong railway enthusiast, Jackie Whelan has told The Clare People this week that the National Roads Authority and Clare County Council are finally poised to pave the way for the narrow gauge line to cross the main Kilrush to Kilkee Road at Moyasta Junction for the first time since it was closed half a century ago.

“It’s going to happen,” said Whelan. “It’s something I have been campaigning for over the last number of years and we have been promised that the big breakthrough will happen by October 20.

“It involves the NRA putting a designated speed limit on the road, making it a 40-mile-per-hour road, which will then allow Clare County Council make the decision to allow the railway cross the road. I have been told that it is more or less approved, it just has to be done officially,” added Whelan.

The impending NRA move comes in the same year that the Clare County Development Plan 2011-2017 gave the West Clare Railway the same designated status as the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren.

“The NRA stopped us from crossing the road, but now that obstacle is being removed,” continued Whelan. “And once it is, the next thing will be to lay more track towards Kilkee and Kilrush and put a museum in place.

“We have to submit a new set of drawings and plans for the museum. We are putting up a big one. The one at the other side will house all the engines. We have a whole lot of historical engines, while upstairs in the museum will be a film area.

“I have a lot of old rolling stock – the biggest collection in Ireland – that has been preserved and there’s an awful lot more of it to be got,” Whelan added.

A CLARE third-level student will be used by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) to contest a judicial review against changes made to the way in which third-level grants are calculated.

USI president Gary Redmond confirmed to The Clare People yesterday that the case of a north Clare student, Medb Hensey, will be used to challenge new Department of Education legislation which increases the distance from a university that a student can be considered “adjacent”.

Under the new rules, which come into effect this September, Medb’s grant will be significantly cut because, even though she lives outside Ballyvaughan, she is considered to live beside NUI, Galway. The case will appear in the high court on October 7.

“Medb is being used as part of this test case. We know this won’t help Medb or other students this year but it might help her, or other students in the same position, down the line.

“We did try to impress on the judge how important the timing of the case was, with students going back to college,” said Gary Redmond, President of the Union of the Student in Ireland.

“This has placed a lot of students in severe financial difficulty and I know that many students, especially from rural areas, may have difficulty going back to college.

“The rationale behind this is that public transport has improved but if you look at a situation like Medb’s, there is no way that she can get to college using public transport each day.”

Medb is planning to take up a year’s study abroad this September and, according to her mother Antoinette, they have managed to save enough money for Medb to study abroad this September.

“USI sent an engineer out to measure the distance and we are 39km from Galway by the shortest direct route,” she said.

“This won’t be of any benefit to Medb this year but we are hopeful that USI may win this case; we will have to wait and see.

“She is going to Malta anyway. We have both been working hard to ensure that we have enough to get her there. We were both determined that that would happen.”

CAR sales dropped in Clare during the summer months, but hopes are high that they will recover for the remaining four months of the year.

Overall, new car sales across the county increased by 5.2 per cent since the start of the year. Up to last Friday, there were 1,984 new cars registered in County Clare, compared with 1,886 during the same period last year.

The figures from www.motorcheck. ie show that while car sales increased in Clare in May and June, they decreased in July and August. The increase in May was 2.5 per cent; in June – when car sales surged prior to the end of the popular scrappage scheme – the increase was a massive 73.9 per cent; the decrease in July was 43.5 per cent, while the drop so far in August is along the lines of 90 per cent. There were 136 new cars sold during the first 19 days of August of last year, compared to just 14 this year.

The number of cars purchased in the ‘all cars’ category – which includes new and used cars – has increased by 3.3 per cent so far this year. However, there was a reduction of 77.1 per cent in this category so far this month. There was a decrease of 16.1 per cent in July; an increase of 62.1 per cent in June and an increase of one per cent in May.

In Clare, the Ford Focus is the most popular choice of car, followed by the Nissan Qashqai, the Ford Fiesta, the Volkswagen Golf, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Juke, Toyota Avensis and Volkswagen Passat.

Silver is the most popular colour of car, followed by black, grey, blue and red, in Clare.

Nationally, the number of cars sold in July decreased by 35 per cent, compared with July 2010. However, the figure for July 2010 included cars in the scrappage scheme, which came to an end in June of this year.

PEOPLE with old sewing machines that are no longer in use are invited to donate them to a group in Shannon.

The Shannon Musical Society is gearing up for its spring production ‘The Pyjama Game’. The show, which will be the society’s 34th production, is based on a trade union dispute in a sewing machine factory.

This is the second time the society has staged this production, following a successful run in 1990.

The group will have its first meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, at the Shannon Knights Inn, where newcomers are invited to attend and meet several of the society’s existing members.

“We have a brilliant crew. Our committee are very young and enthusiastic,” said the PRO of the society, Mary Forde.

“We are trying to encourage new members to join. We have a lot of new people in the past few years but we need to keep adding,” she said.

The show is based on the Richard Bissells novel Seven And A Half Cents , which has been in existence for decades.

Given the show’s topic, she said that the hunt is on for sewing machines. “We would welcome anybody out there with old sewing machines to donate them,” said Ms Forde.

“This is a time for the long-standing members to meet up again after the very successful ‘Wedding Singer’. It’s also a great opportunity for new members to become involved in the society and to meet existing members and get acquainted with the organising and running of the society,” she added.

Carmel Griffin, who has been involved for several years, is the musical director, while Karen Barrett – who also features regularly in the shows – is the choreographer. Donal Cantwell from Dublin, who is involved for the first time, will be the producer.

Rehearsals will get underway on September 6, while the show will be staged at St Patrick’s Comprehensive School from February 12 to 18 next year.

Anyone wishing to get involved in the show should turn up at the Shannon Knights tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8pm, or phone 087 6270107.

THE people of Clare will be given the opportunity to invest in the largest renewable energy project ever undertaken in Ireland through a local share issue being offered by the West Clare Renewable Energy (WCRE).

The co-op style company, which is made up of more than 30 local landowners, was yesterday granted planning permission to build a € 200 million wind farm in Mount Callan. According to company spokesperson Padraig Howard, the company has already been contacted by a number of international investment companies looking to bankroll the project but WCRE have decided to fund construction locally, as much as possible, by issuing a “local share” which would allow the people of West Clare to buy a stake in the company.

“We are very strongly of the opinion that we do not want to sell on the project to outside investors. We started this so that we could create jobs and as a resource for the wider community in west Clare,” he said.

“There will be debt on the project and we will be borrowing from investment funds and banks to get this off the ground but there will also be the chance for people to invest. We are hoping to put out a share offer for the local community and the wider community in west Clare that can buy into the project if they wish. If that happens then that will be absolutely fantastic, because that means that the return from the project will be shared among the wider community in west Clare.”

Construction work on the giant wind farm cannot begin until a connection to the national grid can be secured – something which could hold up the wind farm for up to five years.

“The next step is securing an offer of a grid connection from Airgrid and the Commission for Energy Regulation. That is a very slow and cumbersome process at the moment and we will have to wait for a number of years,” continued Padraig.

“The new government has promised to reform this process and speed it up – especially for projects who have a certain scale, have strong wind resources and are close to an existing grid connection – we tick all three of those boxes. So we are hopeful that we can get over the grid connection difficulty as quickly as possible.

“Without a firm grid connection offer we can only guess when we can start the process. But today is still a day to savour – we now know that this will go ahead sooner than later. We are anxious that this go ahead ASAP but we have been patient in the planning of this and we will continue to be patient.”

Mr Howard also thanked all the people of west Clare who had backed the project and also invited anyone who might have been against the planning permission being granted to further engagement on the progress of the wind farm.

A NEW book, that for the first time attempts to record the history of Drumcliff cemetery, was officially launched in Ennis last week.

Complied by local men Larry Brennan and Eric Shaw, Dr umcliff Cemeter y – The Hidden Histor y of Ennis contains details of some 12,000 graves and 2,700 inscriptions to be found in the graveyard, which has been in use since the early 1800s.

Work on mapping the graveyard began three years ago and the project is a joint initiative between the Clare Roots Society and Ennis Tidy Towns. The process of documenting the extensive history of Drumcliff was undertaken by members of the Roots Society and pupils from Ennis National School between 2007 and 2008.

The book contains articles on the history of Drumcliff plus the biodiversity, flora and fauna, stone cuttings and ironwork within the cemetery. The book also guides readers through the historical graves in the cemetery from the cholera outbreaks of 1832 and 1849 to the Famine Grave, Paupers’ Burial Plot and the tragic drowning at Ballybeg Lake on the April 1, 1896.

According to co-author Larry Brennan, Drumcliff is an area of immense historical importance, “It’s one of the most unusual graveyards, not just in Clare but in Ireland in the sense that every event with regard to the historical background is recorded in Drumcliff, from cholera to famine, to the Carmody’s Hotel disaster, to plane crashes. I have brought people up there from England and America and they are amazed with the history. They look on it as a history trail that can be done, like you do the trail in Ennis, this is another trail that can add to tourism in Ennis.”

He describes Drumcliff as a “search engine”, the first place anyone should look if they are researching any as pect of the history of Ennis.

“Drumcliff is where you start. All the shopkeepers in town are buried up there. Some of them in the vaults. Paddy Con McMahon, where they are renovating Paddy Con’s Hall now. Everyone knows Paddy Con McMahon, but who was he? He was a builder. He was involved in the County Hospital. There is so much information that is hidden up there. But by the initial starting point from a gravestone, you can get a date, if you’re lucky you’ll get an obituary and you’ll find the history of the person then by simply going to the grave or back to the media. It’s a search engine for people who want to search their family or members of their family or historical events.”

Having started the process of recording the history of Drumcliff, Larry believes there are plenty more stories to be told. “It all depends on the angle. Do you do the teachers in Ennis, do you do the priests in Ennis. What do you do in Ennis? There are various things that can be done in Drumcliff. This is only the beginning. We would encourage other people now that might have time on their hands to take an element of Drumcliff to proceed to produce further booklets.”

CLARE is one of eight counties in the State to have experienced a drop in unemployment figures over the past year, a new statistic report on employment has revealed.

However, the drop of just 86 people who are claiming some sort of unemployment benefit has been attributed to an increase in those turning to emigration when finding themselves out of work.

The Central Statistics Office has confirmed that the numbers of people claiming unemployment benefit in the county has dropped from 10,796 in July last year to 10,708 12 months later.

But behind these figures, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of people who are unemployed in the county over the past month – with the figure of 10,708 for the end of July representing an increase of 223 within a four-week period.

And the unemployment figures for the end of July represent the highest in the county since February of this year when the Live Register numbers in the county stood at 10,814.

Figures released by the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed (INOU) show that for the first from February to May this year there was a progressive drop in the numbers of people on the Live Register.

Figures for January 2011 were 10,833, a jump of 264 on the previous month, but by May this had dropped by 547 to 10,286.

For the months of February, March, April and May, Live Register figures had decreased by 69, 191, 204 and 133 – a slide which represented an overall drop of five per cent.

The biggest drop experienced in the county over the past 12 months was experienced in September 2010, when Live Register numbers decreased by 681 from 10,720 to 10,117.

The INOU figures for the county show that there are nearly double the amount of men out of work when compared to women.

The figures, taken from Live Reg ister figures up until June of this year, have revealed that there are 6, 598 men without work, while the figure for women stands at 3887.

Clare is one of three west of Ireland counties to have experienced a drop in unemployment numbers in the last 12 months – the others are Galway (down 183) and Limerick (down 791).

MORE than two decades after the beginning of bitter fight to construct an interpretive centre at Mullaghmore in the South Burren, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has established its first tourism base to serve the world famous national park.

Up until last month the Burren was the only one of Ireland’s six national park’s not to be served by either a information point or an interpretive centre operated by the NPWS. That all changed two week ago when three Burren guides were employed by the NPWS to offer tourism advice and free walking tours from a base in Corofin.

Plans to construct a controvertial interpretive centre at Mullaghmore, which was to be built the Office of Public Works (OPW) and managed by the NPWS, were abandoned in 2000, after a nine-year legal battle to decide planning permission for the site. The new NPWS facility is currently operating from a section of the Clare Heritage and Genealogy Centre in Corofin and poses none of the environmental threats which prompted the campaign against the Mullaghmore Centre.

According to head guide Sheila Murphy, visitor numbers to the facility have been good throughout its first two weeks in operation, with an encouraging number of visitors and local people using the service.

“We have six national parks in Ireland and the Burren National Park is the only one that hasn’t has an information point or an interpretive centre and this is the first year that we have an information point available to the public,” she said. “It is nice to have a place that both locals and tourist can come in and get information and have that service available to them. A lot of the shops in the village and the locality are often asked for information about the Burren and the National Park and they have nowhere really to direct them to.

“I think that this is a complementary development to the Burren Centre in Kilfenora. At the moment we are just an information point but there are plans to have more interpretation in the centre in the future. The Burren is a big area and everyone want to work together to promote it.

“We have three guides in the centre and we can organise free walks on demand if people come in and ask for that and we will also host a free walk every Sunday, which is more aimed at families. It’s a free service and open to anyone who want to use it.”

The new NPWS information point will continue, seven days a week, until the end of September but plans are already in place to run the service for the entire summer season in 2012.

The information point is open from Monday to Friday from 9.30 to 6pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm.